Le point de vue des éleveurs devant la crise

What is the stock-breeders' attitude towards the crisis ? There are two ways of finding out - the best being to ask them. One can also obtain some sort of answer by looking at a few statistics. One then sees that milk production seems to have dropped in 1973 and 1974 and one of the causes is the decline in the distribution of concentrated feeding stuffs, as the drop in sales of feeding stuffs for dairy cows shows, the consumption ratio dropping from 200 on Jan. 1 1973 to 170 at the end of 1973 and all 1974. This is confirmed by surveys carried out amongst stock-breedeirs who have often tended to reduce their purchases. On the other hand many stockbreeders have increased their herds to meet the increase in fixed costs. Finally the general tendency in small-scale stock-breeding regions has resulted in more stock but less output. Where farms are bigger and the land is partly arable, the tendency has been rather to cut down on stock-breeding in favour of cereal production.